If you were seriously afraid of spiders and locked in conflict with one, what's the last thing you'd like to happen? Okay fair, finding out its eggs just hatched would be the worst, but having the cops called on you would be pretty bad too!
An Australian man heard his neighbor making a ruckus and saying things like "Why don't you die?". He also heard a toddler screaming and thought the worst. The man dialed the Wanneroo police who quickly rushed to the residence.
They found the resident merely trying to kill a spider.
In a now deleted photo tweet, the officers provided an update after arriving on the scene, saying,
"Police spoke with all parties who advised that husband had only been trying to kill a spider (has serious fear of spiders). Apologised for inconvenience to police. No injuries sighted (except to spider). No further police involvement required."
The tweet was deleted because it showed a confidential internal system.
Has anyone thought to question the spider?
Police spokesman Samuel Dinnison told the BBC:
"It's just one of those jobs where you go expecting to see one thing and see another. It's great that it's only an incident involving a spider."
It is not known what kind of spider was involved. While Australia has some of the deadliest spiders on the planet, most of its 2900 species are harmless. There have been no deaths from spider bites since 1981.
That won't stop people from freaking out.
This isn't the first incident of its kind. In 2015, a Sydney man was embarrassed after police rushed to his home. They were called after receiving reports of a woman screaming and someone yelling,
"I'm going to kill you, you're dead!"
Upon arrival, the officers found a man battling a spider. There was no woman in the house.